Selecting a Story in Scientific Writing

Writing the module 1 data summary showed me that science writing is much less straightforward than one would initially think.  Though they were not included in the paper, I liked writing the methods section as that appeared to be more concrete.  The methods section were like repeating instructions as clearly as possible to some target audience that would then attempt to duplicate our process and results.  With this process in mind, I felt that the methods were the simplest section to write.  Though the information that we had used in our experiments needed to be repackaged and justified for the audience, there was a clear goal in sight.  The core of the methods is based in objective fact that doesn’t vary from person to person but instead is the same across the board.  Experimental reproducibility in the methods section can be checked by many people and requires the same skills tested in cooking with a recipe or assembling furniture. Though methods may take work, they are a clear and definable section of the paper.

While I enjoyed doing the research and analysis that went into the introduction/background and results/discussion sections, I found these parts more difficult to write.  I thought that these parts may have been tougher to start simply because there were so many ways that our information could be communicated.  When writing my background information section, I came up with a narrative flow that made logical sense to me while other people came up with very different ways of framing the same information.  The results section allowed for even more variety.  Though it was interesting to see how our results and interpretation differed from other groups, I was often worried about whether or not the way I interpreted the data was sufficient or if it would make sense to the audience. Even the teaching staff represented a variety of opinions.  What one instructor liked in a paper another might not.  The huge amount of ways to represent and interpret information made writing these sections harder than a more straightforward section like methods.

One piece of advice that really helped was the suggestion that, as long as the paper can clearly communicate the background, data, and information, it works.  There is more than one right way, and people’s ideas of the right way to communicate are subjective.  Deciding on a story and figuring out which points need to be made in order to communicate that story in a way that is clear to the audience made the writing experience for the introduction and results  easier.  Unsurprisingly, I found that outlining really helped me organize my thoughts. I also learned that trying to explain a lab module and the significance of results to non-Course 20 friends allowed me to create a clear narrative with justifications and explanations present at each step.  In the next module I’m hoping to use the skills I learned in writing the data summary to clarify and simplify the writing process.